Suggested Changes to Shields [GM : 2.25.13 : 5:28]: The way shields work makes them seem easy to dismiss, as a huge power drain to the ship and essentially not worth the effort. The change I am suggesting is inspired by the rough idea we worked on during the session itself. My change would change a shield’s general description to this: “A shield is a field of energy that deflects or absorbs incoming attacks. They function by dispersing an attack’s energy until it is no longer harmful. Like weapons, a shield has two different phases of power drain, a passive and active one. The passive drain is the amount of energy required to create and sustain the field; this requires a remarkably small amount of actual power. When the shield is struck it can deflect up to its Maximum Absorption. Past its Maximum Absorption the Active PC cost kicks in, and if the ship cannot afford the full Active Cost the Shields automatically Shut Down, without redirecting the already spent passive and active pc to the buffer. Turning a system on again is a full-round action for a character. The system is not functional until the same turn it was activated on the next round.” Shutting Down is actually referenced as a way to redirect energy, something anyone can do. The force shut down is a good counter for a shield taking too much energy, it also would automatically try and consume all of the active cost it could before shutting down. Then it takes a full round action to reactivate and it would be several turns before its protection comes up again. I feel like that makes shields tricky and potentially worth using, rather than an unhelpful power drain.

Notes on PC [GM : 2.25.13 : 5:28]: PC Generation works very differently than we originally assumed. Every round the ship generates its total PC. If this is not used during the round it is dumped into a buffer and can be drawn on at any point. So say we’re producing 40 and we use 30 in one full round. Next round we would have 50 to work with because of the 10 dropped into the buffer. It seems any given drive can store 10x its base PC as a buffer. Anything beyond that is lost. This might not help us a great deal but I feel its important to keep in mind, as it would allow us to do several low-PC rounds so we could do a single high-PC barrage later on. This is all described in the I’m Givin’ ‘er All Aye’ve Got, Cap’n! section of the Giantitp Article.

Notes on Ship Outfitting [GM : 2.25.13 : 6:18]: Ignoring my confusion on sizing… Light class ship can have two drives, linked together, which would increase our PC generation. Linked drives work by doubling the number of the drives, and they must be the same. I think we have Fission which normally gives 40 PC a round. Two linked fission reactors, for instance, generate 60 PC per round. Four would generate 80 PC, eight would generate 100 PC, and sixteen would generate 120 PC. Our ship type limits us to two though, still 60 PC is nothing to turn our noses up at.